Sunday, December 30 - Maybe I'm back?
I am feeling much better, most of the time. Things are going very well. School is so-so, tho. We had a schedule and were doing great with it until I added a lot more school subjects and then it got all messed up. I'm hoping dh and I will make a new schedule before the 1st so we can start that back up. Things go so smoothly when we have a schedule!
If you like schedules, but have a hard time making one, or keeping with it, a great book is "MOTH", "Managers of The Home". It is wonderful! It really helped me to become a more scheduled person....some of the time! 
Their website is www.titus2.com/ecommerce/products/prod_listing.php/1100.
Christmas was great! We had a wonderful day at home, just the five of us. Grace was sick, tho. She had a fever for several days and finally found out it was a UTI the other day. She still had fun, just wasn't as energetic as usual...which is ok for us on Christmas! LOL Everyone was very happy w/this gifts. My favorite non-tangible item I got was a nice long nap w/dh that afternoon!!! I also got gift certificates to my favorite clothing store, a remote starter for my vehicle, and an under-the-cabinet clock/radio/TV/CD/DVD player! It looks amazing! It's been bought, but won't arrive for another 2-3 weeks. All I wanted was for it to be a CD player, but dh went all out!
Two girls got digital cameras, which they love and one got an IPOD. Those were their big items. Then just little stuff after that.
I have to go for now. Need to make lunch for the kids! I hope to be on here sometime soon...not as long as last time!
Ta-ta for now!
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Saturday, August 4 - Things are going better!
It's been a long time, again. I have been so happily busy that I don't care to spend much time on the computer, let alone have the time to!
The summer has been awesome, but is going by WAY too fast! I absolutely love this weather. We have been around 90 for many days now and many more to come. I love the warmth! We have been to the town pool most days, which has been great. The girls really enjoy it as well. Gracie, my almost 4yo, is a complete fish! Two weeks ago she would barely go under the water, now she is swimming! She has learned to to the back and front float, bob up and down going under water, blow out her nose under water, and has now learned to swim under water! She can only go about 4 feet at a time, but she is just incredible! I am sooo proud of her. She has come such a long way in such a short time! She is almost caught up w/her 10yo sister as far as swimming abilities! Now I want to look into a health club or somewhere else that has a pool for us to swim in throughout the winter so she doesn't lose what she has learned.
I have also been reading a lot! I have been reading all of Nicholas Sparks books. They are great , clean romantics.
I have also started working p/t for my brother in law. He is an electrician and has recently started his own business. I answer the phones and do paperwork stuff. It's great because the phone is a cell phone so we can still go anywhere and it just comes w/me. He's very understanding that I am still a mom and that I can't always get to the phone, like when we're swimming, kind of stuff. So far its working out very well. I don't think it'll be long term, as when he gets more business I am not interested in a full time job, but for now, its great!
We're heading to Florida in September! I can't wait! We are all very excited. Two weeks in the sunny warmth
! We will visit friends and relatives the first week and then spend time in Orlando the second week. it'll be very nice! (Hey Becky! Can't wait to see you all!)
My dh and I went on a date last night. It's been too long since we've done that. It was terrific! We went out to dinner and then to a local restaurant/bar that has an outdooor patio. We sat at a table outside and had a couple of drinks. It was very relaxing and we could truly imagine that we were in Florida, as it is on a golf course and it was so warm. We often think of moving down there but just can't seem to move from some family and great friends. While sitting there, we thought that if we went a few times a week then maybe we'd want to move to Florida after a while!
OK, that's it for now. I want to get back to my book!
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Sunday, June 3 - Sorry I haven't been on in so long...
Depression can do that to ya.
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Wednesday, May 9 - A new cell phone in the house
Kimberly, our 12yo, got her own cell phone a couple of weeks ago. She has been wanting one for a while now...I think because some of her friends have them, but she disagrees. Anyway, dh and I decided that once she saved a lot more money than the phone would cost, that she could spend the money to purchase a pay as you go phone. We told her that we thought it would be a waste of her money and that it would be a hard lesson learned. She's done quite a bit of text msging which takes up a lot of minutes and she has had to purchase more minutes already. (It came w/150 minutes when she purchased the phone) I don't know, we'll see how it goes.....personally, I think it won't be much longer before she is done playing with the phone and wishing she hadn't spent the money. But, then again, I could be wrong! Either way....I love that kid!
The funny thing to me is....she doesn't even like talking on the phone very much.
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Wednesday, May 9 - This is too slow...
Last night I typed in an entry and hit the 'add new entry' button. I waited and waited and it finally said 'Done' at the bottom of the page, but the screen wasnt' showing anything. So I backed up and typed in a nother long one, did the same thing, it said Done, and I got off. Now today...they aren't even there!!!! One of them was too much to try to put in again!! Oh how frustrating!
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Wednesday, April 25 - Trip to Philly...
It has been a while since I posted. We've been quite busy, and when we're not...going on the computer hasn't been my first choice of things to do!
We went to Philly for a long weekend a couple of weeks ago. We really had a great time. We went because my oldest niece, Kelly, from Florida was going to be there for a few days for work. With her being so close I could't resist the drive to visit with her! Also, her fiance, Daniel, was going to be there with her and we thought that'd be a lot of fun as well!
The down side of the trip is that we really didn't plan before we left. It's funny because we always plan when we go on vacations, but this time my main thought was to visit Kelly as much as we could and I really didn't care about anything else we did while she was working. We picked them up at the airport Friday afternoon and found our way to their hotel in the city. (We'd never been to Philly before) The traffic was incredible! What could've been a 20 minute ride was at least 45 minutes due to traffic! We ended up doing a lot of driving to find things that were difficult to find in the city! 
We often spend lots of time in the car for some reason when we are with Kelly and/or her sister Becca. I guess we just like those great conversations that happen then! On Saturday Kelly had to work so we spent the day with Daniel. That poor guy, having to deal with us who were so indecisive and probably quite boring for him! He was a trooper sticking with us! He seems to be a great guy. I hope he realized how blessed he is to have Kelly to spend his life with. She is so awesome. She is a wonderful young woman. I wish we all lived closer together. Yes, We dream of moving south, but I don't know if it will ever happen. Two of three kids would love to go, hubby would love to go...but can I leave my roots????
We went to find a Friendly's for dinner on Saturday. That was quite a hoot!! I can't go into it all or this would be WAY long, but in short version...we searched and searched and searched and searched for a Friendly's that wasn't even really there!!! We had a scene from the movies with a bunch of quads! We're going down a main street and all of a sudden at least fifteen quads come up from behind us. They were driving in the street, doing wheelies, going on the sidewalk, just down right kind of nerve-racking for us. It was loud and the way they looked at us was kind of scary. Here we were, the obviously naive out-of-towners that looked rather innocent....and a gang-looking bunch of guys on quads in the street in the not so great part of the city driving rather erratically. Boy, were we glad when they disappeared! Now its funny to look back on it, but then, not so funny.
On the way home we tried to stop at an IKEA in New Jersey at exit 13A of the Tpke. I had some good laughs with trying to find our way there, but, my husband...well, thats a different story!!! We get off the exit and get in the lane that the arrow tells us to, then at the last minute, we notice the arrow has changed lanes, but now its too late! We had to go WAY around, through tolls, and back again!! My husband, several times on the trip, made the comment "Theres Ben, there Parliament" from the movie European Vacation w/Chevy Chase. The problem was my husband said it with great frustration and I was trying my best not to laugh out loud. Then the kids questions of, "Are we going to IKEA? Are we almost there yet? I thought it was right out the window a minute ago" and so on, just made it worse for him and harder for me not to laugh! Along with all the rain...that was the weekend that the east coast started their major rainfalls and flooding, made the entire trip home even worse! Roads and ramps closed here and there all the way home. It was too much. What should be a 4 hr ride was over 8 to get home! The kids were more than happy to be home when we got here!
All in all, it was worth every bit of it just to spend that little time with Kelly and Daniel. We hadn't seen them in over 18 months, maybe closer to 2yrs, and it was great to see them!
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Wednesday, April 11 - Precious times to take in.
While typing my last blog, I got to listen to my 3yo daughter 'teaching' on my bed. She has pads of paper, pencils, and is teaching the invisible people all about Jesus. What a beautiful precious time to take in, watch, and remember.
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Wednesday, April 11 - Alzheimers and my Mother.....
Yesterday my sister came down to visit. We are working on a scrapping a photo album for my mother for mothers day. When we started this project we wanted it to be for her birthday which was in January...then we thought for Valentines Day...then we hope for Mothers day! You see, my mother has alzheimers (or some other form of dimentia) and we want to help her w/remembering the people in her life. It takes a lot of work to go through these old photos, generations of people that we don't know, figure out who they are, some w'the help of other relatives, and then putting them on the pages, what order do we want them in, will mom even remember this person, is it worth putting in there??? Will this page be too crowded and she'll be bothered by it?
We noticed that she was being forgetful about 12-13 years ago. She would come home from work and complain how she can't understand this new system they have up and running and how Melissa shows her but Melissa explains it way to fast for me to keep up. That was a common complaint. Now see, my mother was the hub of the office. When computers first came out, she learned them, understood them and taught the others. She was a whiz w/the computer stuff and w/numbers. When she started showing signs of not understanding it, I started to get concerned. Over the next couple of years, and showing a few more signs, my sister said it was probably the stress of work and wait until she retires. After retirement it didn't get any better, but slowly got worse. You know, asking the same question over and over and over and over in a 30 minute time period was a big sign. My brother, sister and I sat down and talked with her about it. She thought (and still thinks) we're nuts, but trusts us and loves us enough to respect our concern and agreed to go to a dr...'to prove us wrong.' After going to a few different drs., it was confirmed that she has some type of dimentia....looking like alzheimers. Over the years it very slowly declined. These last couple of months have proven to be the largest decline!
My parents split up and divorced about 11 years ago. It was a marriage w/no love for many many more years than that. My father passed away this past February. That was the first sign that my mom's memory was getting much worse. When we went to tell her we said "we came to tell you that dad died" her response was "My father?". Her father died over 50 years ago! That day she never really understood who we were talking about. The next day my sister and I went to visit her and she seemed to get that it was a man she was married to, but she thinks she was married to him Yeeaarrs ago and only for a short time (they were married 40 years!). I don't think she ever understood that he was her childrens father. She also started to make up stories about her high school boyfriend (whom she hasn't seen in 55 years and is still alive) had died and she greatly confused the two men. Thankfully, the Lord was very gracious to me and let me see the humor in it all instead of the sadness at the time. Her made up stories were just hysterical and I had to leave her room to laugh which is better than the tears of sadness that often come up.
A couple of weeks ago I brought her to her drs. appt. They ask the typical questions about her memory. We had a new social worker before the dr. this time. She asked my mother how many children she has. My mother responded w/the correct number, 4. The sw said, 2 boys 2 girls? My mothers answer was, "um, no, all girls" When I reminded her that she has a son (its actually 3 girls, one son), she said "Who, I do? Who?" I reminded her of my brother and she said "Oh yea, well, I haven't seen him in ages, I don't know if he's dead or alive." She's seen him several times this year! Then later she told me how she and my father divorced. She had a whole story made up that wasn't true, but did happen to her mother. The drs. said its generation confusion. It was very bizarre. Besides that she is often thinking that my sister and I are Her sisters.
Well, I think we are heading on a down slope, but God is gracious and helping me through this on a daily basis. Thank you Jesus!
I
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Wednesday, April 11 - Reading blogs
I have to say, it is difficult to type in blogs when I am so busy reading others! I got on this morning figuring I would take 40 minutes to write a blog and check out the other newly updated blogs. Well, checking out the others takes a long time. One blog leads me to another that leads me to another and so on. Then I found one that I really wanted to respond to and that took me a long time to type my message to her and now, instead of 40 minutes I have been on for 1hr and 15 minutes already! Phew, this can be time consuming if we let it!
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Sunday, April 8 - A Day's End
It's almost the end of an Easter Day. We had a nice day today. We slept late, wups....had to rush for church. Enjoyed the time at church. Hubby and the girls did most of the picking up for me this morning, also! My sister-in-law came over w/all the food for the day! That was a nice treat. My husband is the oldest of 6 kids, only one girl in the mix. She isn't married and doesn't have her own place, so usually the holiday dinners are our responsibility. It was nice to have someone do much of the work this time. Although I helped get things ready, it was great to not have to do any of the pre-planning and shopping! It was a delicious dinner. A marvelous salad...
Spinach leaves
Sliced strawberries
Crisp bacon
chopped walnuts
Red onion
The dressing was
1C mayo
1/4 cup Rasberry vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
Who would've thought strawberries and onions would go together..but was absolutely yummy!!!! Even my oldest liked it, less the strawberries due to allergies.
I got my dh to have the men to do the vast majority of cleaning up. Of course some of them helped for a couple of minutes then went outside. Just like these men!
Everyone has now left and we are going to have a nice family movie w/Charlottes Web and then the kids will be off to bed!
I hope you all had a wonderful day as well! God Bless. Julie
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Saturday, April 7 - I'll never use a Self check-out
Well, self check outs at the grocery stores....I can't stand them!!! My sweet husband and I have said for a long time now that we won't use them out of principles. Like, "why should we do the work of checking the food and packing the bags, but not get a discount?" We are saving that store money on not having more cashiers there, less money for the store to pay out, shouldn't we get a discount on our groceries if we are willing to do the work? Also, as I've told our kids, the more people that use the self check outs, then the more self check outs they will get and the less jobs available for cashiers. That just doesn't seem right!
Now I'll admit, every once in a while we would use them if we only had a couple of items, all because the girls would beg us to. They enjoy pretending to be the cashier. But a while ago we announced no more of that.
Today I was at the grocery store w/my middle child. We were very pressed for time as I needed to pick up my oldest in 25 minutes and it is a 15 minute drive from where we were. The store is packed, the lines are long. We get in what seems to be the shortest/quickest at the time line. My daughter suggests we use the self check out since we are in a hurry and it would obviously be quicker. I did slightly ponder the idea, as I didn't want to be late for picking up child #1. She was in an area of another town that I wouldn't want her to have to wait outside too long by herself. But I stood firm and said NO.
After 2 minutes of waiting in line and getting absolutely nowhere, I broke down and went to the self check out!! UUUgggggghhhhhhhhh! I will NEVER EVER use one again! That thing was terrible. I scan an item in, put it in the bag, scan an item in, put it in the bag.
Machine: "Item removed from bag area, replace item."
Me and child #2: "what is it talking about, we didn't remove anything" and we patiently wait for the attendant to come help us. he punches in some code and it works again.
Machine: "Extra item in bag, remove item from baggage area".
Us: "Huh???? We scanned an item and put it in the bag!" Again, wait for attendant.
Machine: "Item removed from bag area, replace item" Attendant helps
Machine: "Item removed from bag area, replace item" Attendant helps
Machine: "Extra item in bag. Remove item from baggage area" Attendant helps
Machine: "Item removed from bag area, replace item"
Us: "UUUUHHHHgggggg, we have to move the bags to fill more bags!!!!!" Frustration is greatly mounting now.
After this repeating numerous times, I finally nicely tell the attendant, "Either you finish this or I'm leaving it all here! I am done with this machine!"
Every time we filled a bag and removed it to our cart, it complained. Every time our knee or leg brushed up against the area where the bags were, it complained.
At least 10 times while I was doing it and he was doing it for me, that awful machine said something was wrong and he needed to punch in or scan his code! It took us 3x longer than it would to have waiting in the line. The nice boy said earlier in this ordeal that a lot of customers complain out these and that even the employees do as well. Well then, GET RID OF THEM!!!
I am officially announcing that I will never use one again!
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Friday, April 6 - The days end
Well, our day went well considering the drs. visit wasn't so great. All the things she has reactions to are still there, plus many many more! We'll just have to take it on a day by day status and see how we do.
But we did have a very nice visit with some friends from church this afternoon. The kids all had a great time and I got to have some nice conversation w/the mom. Then it was off to get a haircut and home for dinner. Now hubby is working in the bathroom. We're redoing the main bathroom. He has our youngest helping out. She LOVES to be Daddy's helper! It makes her feel so smart and good and helpful and happy! It is so nice to see them working side by side.
Soon the kids will be in bed and dh and I can have some nice quiet time together w/a movie I rented for us. Ahhhh, what we feel is quality time nowadays!
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Friday, April 6 - Allergies, eczema...coping
Today we have a follow-up appt. for our 12yo with our naturopath. Kimberly has eczema very badly. It started when we were in Florida on vacation almost 6 years ago. She was 6.5 at the time. It started on her arms, inside the elbow area. We thought it was a heat rash....or a rash from the pool...or something just from the new area we were visiting. When we got back home and it continued...but not too badly yet, we finally brought her to our pediatrician. He told us it was eczema and gave us some cream to put on it. We did for a short while, which helped, but it is a steroid based cream and we didn't like the idea of putting that on all the time. When we stopped her arms didn't seem to get worse, so we didn't worry about it. Over the years it has continually gotten worse. This past fall it got much worse, spreading from her arms to the back of her neck, up the back of her hairline and even on the eye lid of one eye. We decided to bring her to an allergist. That brought us knowhere. Eczema is usually caused by an allergy and it is how the body reacts from the inside out. She tested for several of the obvious things...dairy, peanut butter, wheat, eggs, dust, and a few others. They all came back negative, except the eggs. She gave us another cream and said goodbye, wait until she grows out of it or learn to live with it. Oh, yes, she did say to take bleach baths!!!! Uhhhh....no thank you!
We then made an appt. w/the naturopath. She tested for like, 25 or more things and found Kimberly has reactions to the following common foods...dairy, wheat, corn, peanuts, barley, along with some other things. WOW! It made a huge difference when we cut all those things out. But then, the holidays came..Thanksgiving, Christmas, parties. It was very difficult to stay away from all those foods, delicious desserts and so on, so she had some here and there. By mid January, it got REALLY bad. One day it had spread all over her neck, the front and back, up her face, one eye very swollen, her arms looked terrible and she was in itchy pain. She went back on the diet of no wheat, corn, dairy, peanuts and more. This time it only got slightly better. We have gone back to the naturopath a couple of times and it feels like we're getting nowhere! We go today and we are ready to scream!
We've been letting her use the steriod cream again just because it is spring time, she wants to be able to wear short sleeves, bathing suits, and so on and not look terrible. She used to get teased sometimes by a few kids about her arms. I feel absolutely terrible for her, 'suffering' like this. Being at that precious age of 12, going into teenage-hood, there are enough issues to deal with in life. Now we add on a rash that is very visible unless using the cream, not being to eat what everyone else eats, always having to pack her food if going to a friends house during a mealtime...I am crushed for her.
We'll be praying that this visit goes better or we will be looking for somene else to see. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to share them! We'll consider many options at this point.
After our appt. we will have lunch w/some friends, then home for nap for the little one and off to haircuts! Another day of fittng school in sometime!
Happy Good Friday all and may the Lord bless you!
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Thursday, April 5 - Peace
Ahhh, peace can be found when looking at this template. The nice beach, the sound of the ocean in my head....it is sooo relaxing. A great thing to look at when an uplift is needed!
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Thursday, April 5 - Attitudes
The day is starting off with some poor attitudes this morning. Let's just pray that they get better!
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Wednesday, April 4 - Our anniversary
Fifteen years ago today is the day my dear sweat husband and I got married! He is such a wonderful man! When he kissed me good-bye this morning while I lay sleeping in bed, he slipped a card under my pillow. Then when I got up this morning and went into the kitchen, there was another card with a dozen roses. My oh my, he is certainly my awesome husband! I wish every women out there could have someone as great as my guy! After 15 years, I am more in love with him than I was 15 years ago, which to me is hard to believe! The girls and I like hot chocolate in the morning - like some of you coffee people - and every morning when we get up he has all of our cups ready to go. All we need to do is heat the water and pour! And he even has the water pot filled and ready to heat! The Lord blessed me more than I can say when he put us together! My lifelong sweatheart, love, friend. Life is grand.
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Tuesday, April 3 - Never enough time
I don't know how I will ever get the time to be on here. I tried several times during the day, but then someone, usually the middle one, wanted me for something...school work, problem w/computer, something to eat, read to me, the dog is into something, my sister is bugging me, the phone is ringing....and on and on and on! Now that I have quiet time I had many other things to do and now its late and I'm exhausted and can't wait for my head to hit the pillow! We'll try again tomorrow, but it is a girl scouts day and that takes up our afternoon. Then we head off to church for the evening as we all are involved in different programs there on Wednesday evenings. Hmmmm....maybe I won't be here again until Thursday! G'nite...
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Monday, April 2 - Rainy days
I hate rainy days. They put such a damper on my mood. And cold days aren't much better. I somewhat envy those that move to the warmer parts of the country. Maybe someday we'll follow suit.
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